by John Mooney
Working on the doors exposed him to drugs and dealers. Mitchell was his introduction to organised crime. Bowden started dealing ecstasy for him at IR£500 per week. If there is an art to peddling drugs and networking, he possessed it. He sought extra work. Meehan offered him work collecting and delivering slabs of hashish to his clients. He was paid IR£50 per kilo.
Although Bowden came from the working class, his people were respectable. He worried about the direction his life was taking and gave up dealing in September 1992, deciding to go back to school. He wanted to study history and philosophy at Dublin City University. But two years later, he had separated from his wife and two children and found himself under intense financial pressure because he could not keep up maintenance payments. The easy money that drug dealing provided beckoned once more.
So when Gilligan ordered him to find new premises, he scoured the city looking for a suitable place. His search took him to Greenmount Industrial Estate where he rented a small office space. Using the fictitious name Paul Conroy, he paid the required deposit and collected the keys.
The Holland-Cork smuggling route was functioning unhindered. Rahman was freighting the cannabis to Cork where Dunne would arrange its collection and delivery to the Ambassador Hotel.
‘This would be mostly on a Monday. We took the van from there to Greenmount Industrial Estate and transferred the drugs to the lock-up. We would then drive the van back to the Ambassador Hotel to the driver who would wait there,’ said Bowden.
On each delivery, they would hand the driver an envelope with ‘c/o John Dunne’ scribbled on the side. Bowden soon became an equal partner in the Dublin operation. ‘They increased my pay to IR£3,000 a week. At this stage there were five of us involved. From then on we split the profits five ways.’
What would later become known as the Greenmount Gang retailed the product at IR£2,400 per kilo to dealers in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and across the border in Northern Ireland.
‘Shay Ward and I would deliver the hash from there around the city. Each day I would contact Peter Mitchell or Brian Meehan and they would supply me with a list of customers to whom we were to deliver,’ he would later say. ‘I would write up the lists as I got the order over the phones and I ticked them off as the order was delivered.’
Carefully wrapped kilos of cocaine were sometimes delivered, providing Bowden with extra income. Sometimes weapons arrived with the ship-ments. Because Bowden was trained in their use, he was made the gang’s quartermaster.
‘Before the guns would come, Brian Meehan would tell us there would be something else with the hash. The first guns were two sub-machine guns and ammunition. I think 400 rounds plus spare magazines and a silencer for these guns. I unpacked them, cleaned them and oiled them.’ He continued: ‘I brought the guns in my car to Bridget Burke’s public house in Firhouse where I met Brian Meehan and Peter Mitchell. They got into my car and directed me to an old graveyard up the mountain near a convent.’
The location was the Jewish graveyard on the Old Court Road in Tallaght. Meehan and Mitchell hid the weapons in the grave of Mirium Norrcuip while Bowden waited around the corner for them. The machine guns were just the start. More weapons were imported.
‘I remember another time Brian Meehan and Peter Mitchell were away on holidays. I got a call from the Little Man who I know to be John Gilligan. He told me that there was something in the next consignment of hash. When this consignment came, I opened the box and found five nine-millimetre semi-automatic pistols with ammunition for them. They were also brought to the graveyard.’
On every occasion, Gilligan would call to enquire if the guns had come. ‘In January 1996, another sub-machine gun came in with the hash. There was also a .357 Magnum and 12 rounds of brass casing ammunition with silver heads which were concave. I cleaned that gun and oiled it and brought it up to the graveyard. Some of the guns were new and more of them weren’t. The .357 Magnum was a new gun. I just wrapped it in clothes and put it in a tupperware box and it was put in the graveyard by myself.’
Bowden also took possession of a .38 snub-nosed revolver and a .45 semi-automatic pistol with ammunition. Bowden was the only member of the gang who knew how to use and service the weapons, but what Gilligan did know was that the weapons were a valuable commodity in dealing with the INLA. Traynor often passed guns to the terrorists as ‘sweeteners’. Bowden recounted one story later: ‘Sometime before Veronica Guerin’s murder, John Traynor was looking for guns to give the politicals as a sweetener to keep them off his back. By politicals, I mean the IRA or INLA. I was told to give him a .9mm Browning semi-automatic pistol which had a faulty spring—this had come in one of the consignments —and a .38 snub-nose, silver colour. I left these two guns at a little monument on the side of the road near the Jewish graveyard for Traynor to collect.’
The business ran like clockwork. There were no hitches. Indeed, for all the activity, they might not have even existed as far as the police were concerned. It was the deal of a lifetime for Gilligan. Everything was running according to plan until an unexpected visitor called at Jessbrook.
Chapter 10
Fight Fire with Fire
‘It was only a tactic I used to try and frighten her off, that’s all.’
JOHN GILLIGAN
‘If you do one thing on me or write about me I’m going to kidnap your son and ride him. I am going to shoot you. Do you understand what I am saying to you? I am going to kidnap your fucking son and I am going to ride him and I am going to fucking shoot you. I’m going to kill you.’
The menacing tone of Gilligan’s voice had the desired effect, although he could not see it from the other end of the phone line. Guerin’s body trembled with fear: the possibility of her son being harmed numbed her senses. It terrified her.
‘I’m going to kill you. Are you listening to me? I’m going to shoot you and your family.’
His threat had caught her unawares, coming as a complete surprise because she was attending a meeting with her barrister Felix McEnroy. That he would call her, introduce himself by name and threaten to kidnap her child threw her concentration off balance. McEnroy could see by her demeanour that something was wrong. He stood up and walked around his desk to listen to the caller. Guerin turned up the volume on her phone. The barrister recognised the voice, having acted for Gilligan years beforehand. ‘It was like an explosive burst down the telephone. Then he spoke in a more measured and controlled manner,’ he later recalled.[1]
Determined not to give in to intimidation, she turned off her phone. McEnroy took some contemporaneous notes of the conversation and wrote down the time and date: 1.05 p.m., Friday, 15 September 1995. This would be useful to the gardaí. Guerin wasn’t one to give in to intimidation, but this time she really was afraid. Whether he was merely posturing, she could not say, but she knew Gilligan was more than capable of violence. The bruises on her face and the constant pain in her lower back that caused her to walk awkwardly were proof of that. McEnroy thought she looked like someone who had been in a fight.
The journalist must have thought back to the previous morning that started out like any other. She always considered herself a proactive journalist. She generated news—news did not arrive on her desk courtesy of public relations agencies. On that particular morning, she left her home and headed off on a special assignment. Not to meet a drug pusher in an inner-city flats complex or a fraudster sitting in the corner of a quiet cafe in downtown Dublin; no, she drove to the village of Enfield in County Meath. From here she travelled along the narrow country road that leads to the remote village of Mucklon. The signpost there pointed her in the direction of the Jessbrook Equestrian Centre. She arrived at its gates shortly before 9 a.m. and stepped out of her car. Perhaps at that moment Guerin was one of a few people in Ireland who realised why people turn to crime. Traynor was right. Gilligan’s criminal empire was huge.
In contr
ast to her own expectations, Jessbrook Equestrian Centre was a first-class riding school and show-jumping arena. The impression she had been given by Traynor was one of an ad hoc horse farm; she could see this was clearly not the case. Jessbrook was an impressive set-up, worth somewhere in the region of IR£2 million.
The main building comprised a show-jumping arena built to international equine competition standards. This towered above the landscape. Adjoining this was the stable block, where the mares, foals and stallions were tethered and stabled. The centre was set against a backdrop of green pastures, where chestnut-coloured mares ambled about. To the right of the equestrian centre lay Gilligan’s home, an old refurbished house linked to the main road by a long tree-lined avenue. Two electric gates kept out intruders and prevented the escape of the owner’s collection of pedigree Old English Sheepdogs, who bounded about the garden.
In part to let someone know where she was and in part to satisfy her journalistic urge to tell somebody that Gilligan was indeed a millionaire, she rang Chris Finnegan, a detective attached to the Garda National Drugs Unit. The two were close friends, and she knew he was always at the other end of a phone line.
He was having breakfast with his wife in the conservatory of their home when his mobile telephone rang. He remembers the morning vividly.
‘Veronica called me at 9 a.m. She said, “You won’t believe where I am. I’m looking at a mansion, Gilligan’s place,”’ he recalled. ‘She said there were big gates and she was thinking of going over them. I told her not to, that would make her a trespasser. I thought she would go back to her office, that she wouldn’t go in on her own, so I left it at that.’
Guerin had an insatiable curiosity and, no matter what the reason, nothing could have stopped her from pursuing Gilligan. Traynor spoke about him in an adoring way, revering Gilligan as an underworld hero. Those in the Garda who didn’t subscribe to the belief that Ireland had no organised crime problem described him as a millionaire drug trafficker who lived between London, Amsterdam, Brussels and Ireland. Gilligan, they said, had a reputation for violence, and distrust of others formed part of his psyche. His criminal organisation was run along the same lines as a paramilitary organisation. He was familiar with the latest surveillance technology and was obsessed with surveillance and counter-surveillance techniques. He consulted with no one, just issued instructions and didn’t take no for an answer. Much of what Guerin had heard was gossip, but enough to spark off her interest.
On 7 September she had dispatched a letter addressed to Gilligan requesting a meeting, but had received no reply. The letter read: ‘I would like to discuss your recent business success in the equestrian business. This is a tremendous achievement considering you have been working in this business for just two years.’
She knew if she wanted to meet him, she would have to go to him. After ending her call to Finnegan, she stepped out of her car and walked into the reception area of the equestrian centre. The time was approximately 9.10 a.m. There, the riding school’s secretary, Patricia Murphy, met her. Guerin asked if Gilligan was there. Murphy said she didn’t know. The Gilligans didn’t mix with the centre’s staff; hence no one working there had any idea about Gilligan or the source of his wealth. Guerin enquired where he was likely to be and Murphy answered: ‘Try over at the house. They might know.’
‘Can I go straight down there?’ she asked, pointing down the field towards the house.
‘No, go back out the road, turn right and go to the next big gate and ring the intercom.’
Guerin walked back to her car, drove the short distance and pulled up outside the gates. She stepped out of her car and pressed the intercom bell a number of times to announce her presence. She noticed a surveillance camera pointing in her direction and stood in front of this. Moments later, the gates opened. She waited to see if a car or person was coming out to meet her. When nobody emerged, she got back into her car and drove up the driveway.
She knocked at the door. Gilligan was inside with his wife Geraldine. The two had been out the night before, celebrating Darren’s birthday. Gilligan was pottering around the house, wearing nothing other than a silk dressing-gown. He had seen her car coming and remarked to his wife, ‘There’s a car coming down the driveway.’ When he opened the door, he saw a woman he didn’t recognise standing before him.
‘Yeah?’ he said brashly.
Guerin asked; ‘Mr Gilligan?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I’m Veronica Guerin from the Sunday Independent. I want to ask you some questions.’
His facial expression changed and without any warning, he grabbed Guerin by the throat and started punching her in the face, throat and chest area.
‘You write one fucking word about me and I’ll fucking kill you, your husband, your fucking son, your family, everyone belonging to you, even your fucking neighbours,’ he roared.
Guerin was paralysed with fear; Gilligan was beating her about the head with the skill of a professional boxer. She later recalled: ‘He seemed to be physically carrying me towards my car. He continued to hit me in the area of my head, face and upper part of my body with his fists.’
He pushed her over the bonnet of her car, held her down with one hand and continued to punch her in the face. Moments later, he released her from his grip and she slid to the ground. She was dizzy from the beating and tried to scramble to her feet.
‘Get to fuck out of here, get off my fucking property,’ he shouted.
More than anything else, she wanted to escape and went to open the door to her car. As she did so, he grabbed her by the arm and pushed her inside, whilst repeating his threats to murder her. The savagery of the assault sent her into shock and she fumbled for her car keys. But as she found them, Gilligan opened the door and grabbed her again.
‘Have you a fucking mike? Where is the fucking wire?’
‘No, I have nothing,’ she screamed.
Gilligan reached in and pulled open her blouse. He then went for the side pocket of her jacket, ripping it open. He continued threatening to have her family shot if she wrote anything. Satisfied there was no tape recorder, he slammed her car door shut and shouted: ‘Now get the fuck out of here.’
The beating had sent her into a deep state of shock. She sped away, accelerating towards the gates. Gilligan later acknowledged that he did frighten her. ‘I lost the head. I don’t know what happened but I must have frightened her because she flew up the driveway.’
The beating Guerin endured was savage. So much so that she drove in the wrong direction out of Gilligan’s home, a course that brought her off into the countryside. Minutes later, when she had calmed herself down, she rang Finnegan.
‘She was in a state of shock,’ he said. ‘She was distressed. She said, “Chris, he’s after belting me black and blue.”’ Finnegan calmed her down, told her not to worry and to drive back to Dublin.
‘I was now worried, I told her to go back to Dublin and ring the guards.’ Remembering the morning in question, he said, ‘That morning marked the end of the good days for Veronica. It was a defining moment in her life.’
Guerin contacted the Sunday Independent shortly afterwards to alert them to what had happened. She arranged to see her doctor, Stanley Buchalter, at 1.30 p.m. He examined her and noted in his report that she was complaining of a ‘blinding’ headache, pain across her head and soreness above her left eye. He diagnosed shock and extensive bruising and told her to put her feet up. She rested at home for the remainder of the day but, determined not to let Gilligan get away with the attack, rang the gardaí.
Detective Inspector Thomas Gallagher of Coolock Garda Station was familiar with her line of work. He sensed urgency in her voice and drove out to her home in north County Dublin. He arrived at 7.30 p.m. and the injuries she had sustained caught his attention.
The journalist was visibly shaken and not in any state of min
d to give the full details of the attack. Detective Inspector Gallagher reassured her and took possession of the clothes she had been wearing earlier: a black cotton T-shirt and a brown and black plaid jacket. He examined the clothing and took note the T-shirt was torn at the front, while one of the jacket’s pockets had been practically ripped off.
The next day, Guerin met her legal team with whom she discussed the matter; she then drove to Coolock Station to make a statement against Gilligan. Gallagher noted discolouration on her face around her left eye and the fact that she complained to him about pains in her chest and shoulders. He approached the case in a thorough manner and was meticulous in taking her statement, writing down her every word in order that charges could be proffered against her assailant. The search for Gilligan commenced days after the attack.
Sensing problems, Gilligan kept a low profile for a few days and avoided trouble at all costs. He moved into the city centre and started travelling by taxi in case one of the vehicles at his disposal should be stopped at a Garda checkpoint. He was under pressure. After months of working in absolute secrecy to arrange a new smuggling route, his entire operation was facing public scrutiny. Guerin, he felt, would be sure to highlight the attack. By the end of that week, he was proved right when the Sunday Independent published details of the attack naming Gilligan. A photograph of Guerin beaten and bruised accompanied the article. Now the general public knew what type of man he was.
On 25 September, he flew to Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam where he booked into the nearby Hilton Hotel. It was not necessary for him to be in Ireland; Geraldine ran the Jessbrook Equestrian Centre, while Meehan and his crew were taking stock of the cannabis trade. Instead of feeling he had escaped, he felt uneasy, for he knew the police would soon start asking questions about Guerin.
